Theoretical Framework

This section presents an overarching framework or conceptual understanding, grounded in literature, that guides the curation of resources presented in the other sections of this platform. This section provides an overview of what we mean by transformative education, and how SDG Target 4.7 offers a pathway for implementation.

Mission 4.7 believes in Transformative Education 

Transformative Education is an umbrella term that encompasses the common objectives and methodologies of the types of education outlined in SDG Target 4.7, including education for sustainable development, global citizenship education, environmental education, climate education, peace and human rights education, and others. Transformative Education delivers not only the knowledge, but also the competencies, values, and skills necessary for current and future generations to achieve the goals outlined in the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement. Transformative education applies to learners of all ages and levels.


Moving beyond the basics with SDG 4.7

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)4, Quality Education, has given the world an opportunity to not only think of basic literacy and numeracy but also the possibilities of defining what education goals should be for the Decade of  Action on Sustainable Development. SDG 4.7 looks at the possibilities of education –


Target 4.7. Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development, including gender equality and human rights, are mainstreamed at all levels in: (a) national education policies, (b) curricula, (c) teacher education and (d) student assessment.  


SDG 4.7 helps to break away from subject-area silos and approach learning through inquiry-based, collaborative, action-oriented methodologies that leverage knowledge and skills across subject areas to tackle real-life sustainable development challenges in their communities and globally. However this is easier said than done. Each country/state has learning  standards which are often subject and grade specific. Aligning national and state standards to lessons in textbooks and curricula is often where most teachers start when they need to develop lesson plans. National and state curriculum standards help to provide standardized learning goals, but simultaneously make lesson planning and adaptation a very inflexible process. There are many who debate the learning standards themselves. However, there are common principles that the education world agrees to in terms of curricular content and pedagogy that relate to SDG 4.7 framework, such as knowledge about Earth systems, knowledge that is attained using inquiry-based, experiential methods, and equipping learners with skills and confidence to translate knowledge into action. These common principles are reflected in education for sustainable development and global citizenship education.  


According to UNESCO,  Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) “empowers learners to take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity. It is about lifelong learning, and is an integral part of quality education. ESD is holistic and transformational education that addresses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment. It achieves its purpose by transforming society.” 


As defined by UNESCO, “Global Citizenship Education (GCED) works by empowering learners of all ages to understand that these are global, not local issues and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable societies”.


Framework for Mission SDG 4.7

This literature-driven framework (Figure 1) keeps justice and sustainability at the center. This centering of justice and sustainability borrows from the Value-Creating Education theory first developed by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi in Japan in the 1930s. Makiguchi proclaimed that happiness was the ultimate goal of human life, and that education should be organized to facilitate learners to “acquire competence as creators of value and thereby find happiness in the process” (Bethel, 1984, p. 57). This theory of education purports that people can bring ever more beauty, comfort, and justice into the world through their interactions within their environment and community, and that value-creation is the outcome of such engagement, translating to, as Odari describes “caring for others and working to have a just and inclusive society”(2020, p. 60).  Therefore, constructs of justice are central to the Mission 4.7 framework and key for achieving sustainability through the SDGs. 


Figure 1: Mission 4.7 Framework

Keeping justice and sustainability at the center helps to articulate the sub-domain learning area lenses included in SDG Target 4.7 through which educators can guide learners to understand sustainable development challenges and how different populations and ecosystems are impacted in various ways. The learning areas included in the Mission 4.7 framework come from the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 Target language, with some slight modifications. These learning areas are:



This framework is informed by socio-ecological models of resilience and well-being in children as illustrated in UNESCO’s Social Ecological Framework, which consider the intersecting roles of a child’s environment – including their family, school environment, community, culture, and other factors – in facilitating resilience and well-being. Within this framework, there are significant roles that education institutions and stakeholders can play in connecting school, home, and community environments to  develop skills and behaviors in learners, families, and communities that foster collaboration in catalyzing local efforts toward justice and sustainability. Through a value-creating education lens as outlined above, such community efforts toward sustainability create value and contribute to individuals’ happiness and well-being in the process.


Borrowing from the socio-ecological framework, Figure 1 illustrates how the learning area sub-domains of SDG 4.7 are nested within school, family, and community environments that can all serve as mutually reinforcing learning and action mobilization opportunities to achieve the SDGs, with education institutions serving as the hubs for fostering deeper connections among these environments. The Mission 4.7 framework calls for education decision-makers to integrate the SDG 4.7 learning areas to be integrated across these three environments:


For further discussion of the learning areas included under the SDG 4.7 umbrella, the following sections offer reviews of literature for each intersecting area.

Education for Sustainable Development

 

UNESCO defines Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as education that empowers learners with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and make responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society.

Education for Sustainable Development is a lifelong learning process and an integral part of quality education. It enhances the cognitive, social and emotional and behavioral dimensions of learning. It is holistic and transformational, and encompasses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment itself.


ESD is recognized as a key enabler of all Sustainable Development Goals and achieves its purpose by transforming society. ESD empowers people of all genders, ages, present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity.


Read UNESCO’s definition of ESD 


Global Citizenship and Human Rights Education

UNESCO defines global citizenship education as aiming “to instill in learners the values, attitudes and behaviors that support responsible global citizenship: creativity, innovation, and commitment to peace, human rights and sustainable development.” Global citizenship education cultivates skills and attitudes for civic action, including empathy, a concern for cultural diversity, an ethics of justice, and care for and peace between people and planet. These skills aim to equip learners with competencies, empowerment, and agency to address environmental and social challenges.


William Gaudelli’s areas of scholarly expertise include global citizenship education; teacher education and development; and media and visual texts as curriculum tools. He has provided extensive contributions –both critical and humanistic—to the development of global citizenship education and pedagogy, frequently engaging with the work of John Dewey. Several books and many articles make contributions to theorizing global education. One study explores the possibilities and problems of identity discourse for educators and practitioners, while another compares two schools in NYC in a reflection on global education in a neoliberal world. Gaudelli has provided an analysis of Pope Francis’ Laudato si for global citizenship educators, and made important contributions regarding education and social inequality.

 

Democracy and visual texts have also been of important interest for Gaudelli. He has inquired into the democratic insights gleaned by students engaging with visual texts, and promoted the advantages and limits of dynamic visual texts (such as video games) for promoting global learning. He has also promoted discussion of the convergence of distance and multicultural learning and investigated the possibilities for global human rights education.


Numerous scholars (Bajaj, 2011, 2017, 2018; Flowers, 2003; Mihr, 2004, 2008; Russell et al, 2019 ; Suarez, 2007; Tibbitts, 2002, 2010, 2017) have studied and theorized about human rights education in schools. Critical and emancipatory human rights education, drawing on the pedagogy of Paolo Freire, invokes the values of human rights as a secular, cross-national vision that places human dignity at the center of an ethical framework primarily concerned with addressing inequality and oppression in society. Human rights education is linked with both ESD and Global Citizenship Education through a shared ethos of rights and duties in community - local, national and global - while also drawing on the human rights legal standards. In recent years, human rights have embraced the principle of collective rights (not just individual ones) as well as the right to the environment and environmental justice.


A UNESCO analysis of the presence of human rights themes in textbooks shows a remarkable increase over the past 20 years.  Though the concept of human rights is more common in national curriculum frameworks, such treatment might be far from a ‘liberating’ vision, reduced to a historical or legalistic treatment, with little application to everyday life. The challenge for human rights education, therefore, is to ensure that its critical lens is applied to contemporary society.

 

Gaudelli has promoted the reconceptualization of geography and its social implications as democratic global citizenship education and argued for the reorientation of social studies around the engagement of diversity towards common goals. He has also been involved in work on social issues related to teaching about the federal budget and deficit in high schools and in college economics textbooks.


Sharma (2020) proposes a “value creating global citizenship education” (p. 61). The framework for this includes the following  concepts-


Elizondo (2020) identified these values as-


More examples of Global Citizenship Education:



Environmental & Social Justice